I came across this awesome video clip on YouTube which was lifted from Discovery channel, first laying out the size of Earth in comparison to our Sun – and then our Sun against some of the more massive stars discovered through our never ending universe vigil.
It’s impossible for my mind to wrap around this sort of scale to be honest, and once again a reminder of just how insignificant we humans are in the greater scheme of things.
Review: All-Star Superman (2011) Animation | My Reviews 19 MAY 2011
Well, that was certainly… different. Not that it wasn’t enjoyable or anything, but DC Comics and Warner Bros. Animation’s tenth outing in their DC Universe Animated Original Movies line, namely All-Star Superman is a very different sort of story from what the line has thus far trod.
More of a thinking man’s movie than a kid’s knuckle buster superhero yarn, it tells the tale of a Superman whose cells have been over saturated with the sun’s energy, increasing his powers and intellect tenfold but at the same time poisoning him and radically shortening his lifespan.
The question then arises, “what should he do?”. It is a film about Superman settings his affairs in order and dealing with the various threads that make up his existence, leading to a far more intellectually challenging story than what we normally get from these particular movies, a good indicator being that this is the first movie in the line to receive a PG rating instead of the usual PG-13 rating!
The pacing of the first half of the movie feels a little rushed and off, but it does propel us down the story just fine, though it may lose some of the casual viewers not associated very well with the Superman mythos along the way. It covers all the ground it wants to in order to make it a meaningful outing (for example the relationship between Clark and Lois) and ends off in a way which you might not necessarily expect, but one which certainly suits the mood of the story.
As per usual, the animation is strong and the ever so slightly styled and colorful visuals are fantastic to take in. Voice artists all fulfil their respective roles nice and credibly, while the orchestral background music remains as strong as ever.
This is definitely not a movie which action-hungry kids or adults will necessarily enjoy (though it does feature a fair bit of action funnily enough), and I can’t say that I really enjoyed it all that much either -though I can understand what it was trying to achieve and appreciate it for the type of story it so successfully tells.
The House of C 020: Global Warming – Not Cool The House of C 19 APR 2010
Frost Giants. They’re big, they lumber and they seem to be made up completely of ice. A staple of fantasy no matter where one looks, it does however become quite tricky to remove them from the natural, frozen habitat. After all, no one likes a big puddle in the middle of their floor – though I guess in this period of global warming and drought, all that extra water may not be such a bad thing after all!
And on a completely different note, that’s it, the end of my re-run comics. Next Monday we move on to the new stuff baby! (not that the lack of practice has improved my scribbles mind you!)
Portfolio: EPRU Tree Logo (October 2007) Sketches, Paint & Photoshop 14 APR 2010
Way back in October 2007 I was commissioned to come up with a logo for the newly established Environmental Policy Research Unit that fell under the Faculty of Commerce at the University of Cape Town. Since I was recently asked to dig up those old designs and send it through to a new administrator for that project, I thought it a good idea to post it up here as a reminder to myself that this was also something I found myself doing in those bad old days when one still needed to scrape together pennies from which ever direction they came, no matter what work you were required to do in order to get them! :)
As you can see, the accepted logo was a pretty simple silhouette-based piece of work that highlighted the environmental nature of the research unit through the symbolic use of an majestic tree in front of a setting (or rising) sun. I then used a nice emboldened font of their official abbreviation and in order to explain the abbreviation further (because of the newness of the unit), I placed the full text of the name in an umbrella view over the tree and sun symbol.
(Below the logo you can see the web banner I proposed for their standardised site design.)
Looking at it now, I can’t help but think that I still quite like the design I came up with. It’s not particularly colourful, but it is bold, gives you a good idea of what the unit is about and tells you exactly just who it is whom you currently are reading about!
A Brighter Shade of Pink General Nonsense | My Life 17 DEC 2008
Ouch. Ow. Ow. Ouchie. Hmm, got my first bit of summer sun yesterday and needless to say our fierce encounter left me rather worse off than that smug yellow bastard. My neck, shoulders, arms, back and the top of my protruding tummy are now all a bright shade of painful pink.
It’s stiff, it’s sore, it looks funny and my scratchy work shirt really isn’t helping at all. Oh well, guess it was better to get it over and done with before this weekend’s upcoming Witsand trip! :)
That said, it was oh so worth it. The seawater was absolutely fantastic and the complex pool isn’t half bad itself. Seems like I’m going to be spending a lot of time this Summer under water! Ah, the good life of living right next to the beach…
So, you envious yet?
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